Andarin: The Mountains: song at the end of the world; michabou

He hears a storm coming, far-off, coiling above the distant snaking mountains that birthed the slopes of Andarin, and the tongue of the valley that lay supine before them: a snow storm, a thunder storm, a storm never before seen as the elements danced and writhed within it; he hears it without knowing, without deciphering its whispers, and all he can care to feel is the simple mingling of hairs and stale, exhaled breaths in the unrelenting chill of the air, haunting. In that unseen middle distance, a lightning bolt pulses into the earth, and he feels it through his skin, her skin, as he remembers and wonders and, just as swiftly, forgets – what, and why, and the reason he was here: to wake, watch, and wonder, and to see the world end? The affliction burns in his mind, hovering like an errant fly just out of view, and he can’t remember why she feels so safe, so familiar, so damnably needed in the freeze of the burgeoning wind (that whips and whirls every so suddenly from the north, and south, and east and west and all around: it is coming, he thinks, and whispers) and in the wake of the breaths they tossed to it.

Her name rings in his head, Fehazathant black and blue and shining in the rarefied air, the scant spaces between them glowing with the thrown light of moon refracted by suspended ice; his sides are damp with the interface of warm body and cold air, and he feels it just as acutely on the slopes of his neck and the curve of his muzzle with which he had touched her. Michabou, he thinks, and it rings in his head as the notes of a bell struck; a gust of wind catches him off-guard with her scent, and the smell of the storm brewing, and the fragrance of Andarin and the wolves and its trees rendered magnificent: the rocks glow with ice and the air is stark and naked before them, and he is naked before her, a stranger in a strange land, as the wind whips and slays the stillness:

“Michabou,” he says, and stumbles; he turns to her, and his eyes grasp at her for the first time, and with a sudden and quiet desperation. The storm is coming, he thinks, and he cannot say it; he swallows, thickly, past a tongue swollen with cold and his teeth stained with the browned grass of winter, and I remember you from somewhere, where I cannot remember myself, winding around the muscle-memory of her touch.

“Dance with me,” come away with me, away from the End, brewing on the horizon, and he moves with a grace and swiftness that cast doubt at the feet of his maturity: he spins before her, his hooves skidding through and hoisting a sail of falling snow between them, as he darts his head forward to nip with playfulness - doom be damned - and the smooth sparks of longing as the tip of his tongue grazes her skin, savouring. He is a black wraith in the whirlwind of snow, and in the blue of his old, old eyes, she glows; his heart leaps half out of his chest, in recognition, and in the woven song of the loons and the anti-gravity of the moon’s light. He hears it, the silent sound, as he throws his head to the sky; it is coming, it is coming, and he knows her now as if always, in the rays of light and memory technicolour, in the cacophony of the onrushing wind and the oncoming storm belligerent and mighty – it is coming, and his feet do not touch the ground, shifting through the sleet and snow as if held aloft by the wind.

“Dance with me,” he says again, asking and promising: she is so beautiful, in the moonlight and the oncoming storm, and even as the memories ebb and flow, in the serenade of sound and her, he cannot help himself.

OOC: Yes, he and I are going to Eclypse! teehee <3